3949 

7 
y 1 



ADDRESS 



UEFORE THK 



ALUMNI ASSOCIATION 



UNIVERSITY OF NORTH CAROLINA, 



DELIVERED IN GERARD HALL, JUNE 2, 1847 



(rnr, kvknixc: pRiicicniNG commenc;kment day,) 



HON. JOHN Y MAkSON, L I. 1) 




C/) WASHINGTON: 



[•i; [ \'!'F, I) H Y J. AN I) G. S. (; I DKo \ 



1S4' 




''*^'^^-^^- 



LD 3949 
.P4 
1847 
Copy 1 



ADDRESS 



BEFORE THE 



ALUMNI ASSOCIATION 



UNIVERSITY OF NORTH CAROLINA 



DELIVERED IN GERARD HALL, JUNE 2, 1847, 



$i\ 



(the evening preceding commencement day,) 



HON. JOHN Y. MASON, L. L. D, 




U) WASHINGTON-. 

PRINTED BY J. AND G.S. GIDEON, 

1847. 



i 



■A 4 



CORRESPONDENCE. 



At a meeting of the Alumni Association of the University of North Carolina, held 
in Gerard Hall on the evening of the 2nd June, 1847, it was unanimously resolved, on 
motion of the President of the University, immediately after the delivery of the an- 
nual address by the Hon. John Y. Mason : 

'' That the thanks of the Alumni Association be presented to Secretary Mason, and 
that he be requested to furnish a copy of his address for publication." 

His Excellency Gov. Graham, the Rev. Prof. Green, and the Hon. Judge Battle 
were appointed a committee to carry this resolution into eifect. 

Chapel Hill, June 3d, 1847. 
Sir : The undersigned have been appointed a committee to tender to you the grate- 
ful acknowledgments of the Alumni Association of this University for the very 
able, interesting, and instructive address which you delivered in Gerard Hall last 
evening, and to request a copy for publication. 

With the highest regard, we are, yours, &c., 

WILL. A. GRAHAM, 
' WILL. M. GREEN, 

WILL. H. BATTLE. 
To the Hon. John Y. Mason, present. 



Chapel Hill, June 3d, 1847. 
Gentlemen : I have received your esteemed favor, in which, as a committee, you 
tender to me the acknowledgments of the Alumni Association for the address which 
I had the honor to deliver in Gerard Hall last evening. Happy in having met the 
wishes of the Association, and deferring to their judgment of the merits of a pro- 
duction on which you have kindly expressed so favorable an opinion, I will comply 
with your request, and transmit to you a copy of the address so soon as I can pre- 
pare the manuscript for publication. 

With the highest respect and regard, 

Your obd't servant and friend, 

J. Y. MASON. 
Messrs. Wm. A. Graham, 
Will. M. Green, 
Will. H. Battle. 

Chapel Hill 



ADDRESS. 



Mr. President, and gentlemen of the association: 

In appearing before you to-day, while I regret that your invita- 
tion had not found one possessed of more leisure than I have had 
in which to meet its requirements, I am glad of the opportunity 
which has thus been afforded me, to testify my continued interest 
in my Alma Mater, and my sincere regard for those great purpo- 
ses of science and of virtue which it is the fortunate office of an 
American University to promote. 

After intervals of absence — some of them embracing more than 
a quarter of a century — we visit again, mindful yet of our literary 
brotherhood, the cherished scenes of our youthful studies, and re- 
new for a few brief hours, amid the fragrant memorials of Chapel 
Hill, our ancient companionship of letters, and our old assodations 
of classic life. Turning aside from our accustomed pursuits, we 
exchange the greetings of friendship in halls long sacred to religion 
and to truth; and before the altars of our early worship, we gather 
fresh motives of gratitude to the venerable Institution whose vir- 
tues they commemorate. We surrender ourselves to the mild in- 
fluences of the day and the occasion. We forget the discords of 
professional strife; the hard competitions of business; the feverish 
thirst for fame: and hushing all the thousand voices of party zeal, 
we bow ourselves in unresisting submission to the divinity of the 
place. 

In such influences we find our best preparation for the Anniver- 
sary which we celebrate. It is a festival less of the head than of 
the heart. It has more concern with generous impulses and warm 



affections, than with the cold deductions of reason, or the dry spe- 
culations of metaphysics. It is wisely intended, not so much for 
the exhibition of hoarded knowledge and the discussions of abstruse 
thought, as for the promotion of kind feeling, the strengthening of 
good resolves, the awakening and quickening of a spirit of improve- 
ment in ourselves and in others. It brings together, from remote 
places and from various paths, those whose only memories in com- 
mon cluster around this seat of learning; and it thus perpetuates 
attachments which might otherwise lie buried for ever in the dust 
of years. In this view of its character, it claims the rewards of 
patriotism, no less than the regards of friendship; and strengthens 
our union as citizens, by reviving our connection as students. The 
bonds which hold together our extended confederacy of States, are 
not those alone which are to be read in written constitutions and 
gathered from the enactments of legal codes; but those, rather, 
which are found in the interchange of social kindness; in the at- 
tractions of literary intercourse; and in the manifold associations 
which spring from the communions of religion and the pursuits of 
business. Every institution, therefore, which, like our own Soci- 
ety, gathers its members at frequent periods from distant sections 
and different States, forms a new link in that most important chain 
of causes, upon which we must chiefly rely, under Providence, for 
the support and perpetuity of our republican system. 

In behalf of that system , how numerous and powerful are the 
motives which appeal to us on an anniversary like this. The 
tranquility of these academic walks, the circumstances, all of them, 
under which we assemble, speak to us of a beneficent Government 
and a prospered country. The experience, too, of every one of us 
enforces the same lesson with the strength and vividness of a per- 
sonal conviction. 

In what other nation has honest ambition so wide a range, and 
merit so certain and so brilliant a reward ? Where else, in the civ- 



ilized worlcf, can a virtuous education be so surely obtained, and 
lead to results of such transcendant worth ? 

A distinguished illustration of this truth we have present in our 
own companionship to-day. The youth, whom some of us re- 
member as a student of Chapel Hill in the class of 1818, whose 
feeble health had threatened to quench his ardent thirst of know- 
ledge, returns to us now, the occupant of the highest political sta- 
tion which is known on earth. We recognise here no distinctions 
of artificial rankj no claims of lineage; no assumptions of wealth; 
but we acknowledge that the honors conferred upon our brother-in- 
letters are reflected back upon our University and ourselves, and 
we recognise them as the fruit of wise instruction, and as incent- 
ives to efforts in others, to whom opportunities are offered, more 
favorable, even, than were his. We greet him on this auspicious 
occasion, not alone as the Chief Magistrate of the Republic, but in 
a more near and friendly relation, as our ancient associate in study, 
and a graduate, with us, of the same honored institution. Here, 
where in the bright morning of life he laid, in virtue, in industry, 
and in science, the deep foundations of his subsequent success, he 
comes back with us, to pay the sincere homage of gratitude for 
those early privileges to which he owes so much, and which he can 
now, more than ever, value as they deserve. - In his recollection, 
as in the memory of us all, this ancient place yet glows with its old 
attractions, and our affections fondly turn to it, amid the wander- 
ings of earth, with something of youthful ardor, as well as of filial 
respect. However in other scenes and less tranquil pursuits, 



" the ear is all unstrung, 

" Still, still, it loves the lowland tongue." 

But time, which matures and ripens, also destroys; and as our 
eyes wander over this assembly, we mourn the absence of many 
a familiar countenance and manv a beloved form. While we ac- 



knowledge new and welcome accessions to our number from the 
youthful graduates of the year, we are compelled to remember that 
they occupy the seats of earlier companions, who have been swept 
away in the lapse of years, and who repose now in the silent sha- 
dows of the grave. To those of us who were together here thirty 
years ago, " rari nantes in gurgite vasto,^"* these mournful recol- 
lections come home with peculiar power. Like dim voices of the 
dead, they speak to us from the chair of the instructor as well as 
from the bench of the pupil. 

" Now kindred merit fills the sable bier ; 
- Now Jacerated friendship claims a tear ; 
Year chases year ; decay pursues decay ; 
Still drops some joy from withering life away." 

And here I should do injustice to the occasion and to my own 
feelings if I did not pursue^this painful theme for a moment, to pay 
the tribute of my affectionate regard to the memory of him who 
for so many years, often under most adverse circumstances, 
but still with signal success, administered the affairs of the Uni- 
versity as its presiding officer. No one, I am sure, who has ever 
shared his counsels or profited by his mild reproofs, can easily for- 
get the wisdom and the virtues of President Caldwell. Uniting 
extended learning with sound judgment, he possessed the rare and 
difficult art to temper admonition with kindness, and to render dis- 
cipline more effectual by making it less repulsive. 

" His life was gentle •, and the elements 

So mixed in him, that Nature might stand up, 

And say to all the world, ' this was a man. ' " 

His character and his usefulness — what he was, and what he 
was enabled to do — suggest a theme, which in this theatre of his 
labors, and among these witnesses of his fame, it would be a grate- 
ful task under other circumstances to pursue. But his own exam- 



pie would rebuke us, if we should allow even his merits lo tuin 
us aside from contemplating the great objects of his toil. Let us 
seek rather to understand and to do homage to those vast interests 
of enlightened culture in our own country, which he lived, and, I 
had almost said, he died to promote. 

To this general subject we are invited, not only by the proprie- 
ties of the occasion , but by its own intrinsic dignity and worth . 
In its broad and comprehensive sense, the work of education is the 
grand business of human life; and in these United States, I need 
hardly say, it can never be neglected, but at the hazard of conse- 
quences which no patriot can contemplate without alarm. 

This belief was present with America at its very birth, and 
stamped upon its rising institutions the great impress of freedom 
and perpetuity. In the history of other nations, learning has been 
the slow growth of a society already formed, and has existed, at last, 
only as the ornament of wealth or the champion of power. But 
with the Fathers of our Republic, next to religion, it was the first 
thing thought of ; not as a luxury, but as a necessity; not as the 
handmaid of privilege, but as the nurse of equality; not as the 
child of endowment or the accident of place, but as the surest basis 
of public prosperity and of private happiness. They planted know- 
ledge, therefore, in the wilderness; established schools as soon as 
they builded habitations; and laid the foundations of a University, 
while yet they were struggling with the ravages of disease and the 
apprehension of want. More than a century ago the charter gov- 
ernments were celebrated for ^'promoting letters by free schools 
and colleges" — and to this feature of their character has been 
traced the secret of their great success. '^ Every child born into the 
world was lifted from the earth by the genius of its country, and 
in the statutes of the land received, as its political birthright, a 
pledge of the public care for its morals and its mind." 

it has been said that, under a Goveriunent like ours, whatever is 
2 



10 

gained in politics is lost in learning, and that a nation becomes less 
truly intelligent by becoming more thoroughly Republican. Yet 
no country has done so much for learning in so short a time as 
America. Unexampled as has been its growth in all the elements 
of physical power, its means of education have multiplied with its 
advancing population, and gone hand in hand with its increasing 
wealth. When this institution was founded in 1789 it had not 
more than ten associate colleges in the whole Union; and many 
of these ^ in every thing but the naiBe, were hardly on a level with 
our modern academies. There are now in the United States at 
least ten times that number, with an aggregate of nearly eight 
hundred instructors, an attendance of twelve thousand students, 
and a library of six hundred and fifty thousand volumes. Inde- 
pendent of these, but laboring in the same field of usefulness, are 
thirty-four schools of theology, thirty-two of medicine, and eight 
of law, all of them in successful operation, and some of them mu- 
nificently provided with the most costly apparatus and most valu- 
able works. The true glory, however, of republican culture is 
found in those less ambitious nurseries of learning w^hich, scattered 
broadcast over the Union, extend the opportunities of free in- 
struction to almost every family in America. From the imperfect 
returns of many of the States, and the different systems adopted 
in various sections for accomplishing the same end, an accurate 
summary on this subject cannot well be obtained. Five years 
ago it was estimated that, in the whole country, there were not 
less than two millions of pupils, who attended common schoolsj 
but a better idea of their extent and influence may be gathered 
from the statistics of a single State. In New York, there are 
nearly eleven thousand public schools; not less than half a million 
of pupils; and district libraries for the use alike of children and 
adults, comprising in the aggregate more than a million of vol- 
lEmcs. In that State ^ 1 am aware, the school system has been 



11 

the work of many years; but even the system of Ohio, one of 
the youngest States in the Union, may well attract our astonish- 
ment and respect. Here, if any where in the land, considering 
her late existence and marvellous growlh, we might have looi^ed 
to see the cultivation of mind fatally postponed, if not wholly 
overwhelmed by the thronging demands of enterprise, and the 
pressing employments of active life. Yet her constitution de- 
clares, in the genuine spirit of the Republic, '^ that knowledge is 
essential to good government and human happiness," and that 
'^ schools and means of instruction should be encouraged in such 
a way, as is consistent with freedom of conscience." Acting on 
the admirable sentiment of this provision, she had established, 
as long ago as 1840, eighteen colleges and nearly six thousand 
schools, which were attended by two hundred and twenty-five 
thousand scholars. 

These illustrations evince, at a single glance, the extended in- 
terest of our people in the diffusion of knowledge, and the mag- 
nificent results which that patriotic interest has achieved. If some 
States have done less than Ohio for the cause of instruction, 
there are others which have done more — and all of them , I be- 
lieve without exception, have recognised its importance by wise 
constitutional or legal provisions. The public funds set apart for 
this purpose in the whole Union, including the generous grants of 
land by the Federal Government, to promote the sales of its pub- 
lic domain, need not shrink from comparison with the boasted 
literary endowments of Europe; and yet they fall very far short of 
the entire expenditure in the United States for the education of the 
young. The cost of private instruction forms of itself an ad- 
ditional item of immense amount, while the grand aggregate is 
still further increased by the frequent contributions of individual 
beneficence, for the foundation of libraries, or the improvement of 
schools. In the field of letters, as every where else in our coun- 



m 

iry, the great principle of voluntary effort is ceaselessly at work, 
and constantly rivals, by the energy of its movennents and the 
magnitude of its effects, the most successful action on the part of 
Government. The exercise of their combined power has pervad- 
ed the very heart of the people with the influences of moral 
and mental culture, and has extended the means of education to 
every grade of society and every condition of life. 

Aided, however, by no combination with the State, the reli- 
gious teachings of America are the work purely of private bene- 
ficence. In the republics of antiquity, religion was only a part of 
their pohtical system, and the head of the State was also the fa- 
ther of the church. This unnatural connexion, fatal alike to 
Christianity and to liberty, which even yet lingers in the Old 
World, has been wholly repudiated in the New — and the land of 
Roger Williams and Thomas JeflTerson proclaims liberty of con- 
science from sixty thousand churches, and inculcates virtue and 
toleration in as many Sabbath schools. Free government is valu- 
able, after all, not so much for any direct exertion of its own 
power, as for what it permits the people to work out for them- 
selves. 

The Press began its work in 1639 : a century afterwards it had 
earned the prohibition of England, and was strong enough to defy 
it ; and at this day, it asserts its freedom by an influence which is 
only not despotic because it is not harmonious. Far outstripping 
by its enterprise the fertility of our own writers, the American 
press appropriates unshrinkingly the literary treasures of the whole 
earth ; while it almost forbids miportation of books by the cheap- 
ness with which it reprints them, and the facihty with which it 
scatters them among all classes of the reading community. But 
the most striking displays of its activity and power are only to be 
witnessed in the field of Journalism, where it more than equals 
France in energy, and knows no other rival throughout the world. 



13 

It printed the first newspaper in America in the year 1704 ; in 
1828 it had joined an additional miniber of eight hundred and 
fifty ; and, at this day, it acts upon the popular mind through the 
teeming columns of more than two thousand journals. Sharing, 
as well as stimulating, the progressive spirit of the age, it advances 
into the wilderness with our hardy pioneers ; keeps company with 
our commerce among the islands of the sea ; and contends for 
supremacy with the sword upon every battle-field which is won 
by our victorious arms. Already it sends us shipping lists from 
the Sandwich Islands, chronicles the news of the day in La Vera 
Cruz, and echoes back the thunder of our cannon from the shores 
of the far Pacific. Becoming thus the missionary as well as the 
schoolmaster of republicanism , it plants among other nations the 
seeds of freedom, which it has itself ripened upon our soil ; and 
having first contributed to the glory of America at home, it crowns 
its labor of patriotism by making it better known , and therefore 
more honored, abroad. 

With influences such as these, it more than pays back to our 
country whatever of nurture it has received from it, and richly 
atones for all the imperfections or abuses by which it so often de- 
serves the reproaches of society, and sometimes seems, almost, to 
require the censorship of law. The force of enlightened public 
opinion constitutes, after all, its best restraint, and the only one 
which would leave to it all its value. Under this guidance, if its 
teachings are not always pure, they are seldom dangerous ; for its 
errors are met by truth as soon as they appear, and, like the lance 
of Achilles, it has the virtue to heal the wounds which it has itself 
inflicted. In the higher branches of literature, the good which it 
confers is never doubted ; and if it is less free from censure in its 
lighter publications, yet its agency even there is on the side pf vir- 
tue and in favor of liberty. ^* Were it left to me to decide,'* 
writes Mr. Jefferson, " whether we should have a government 



14 

wilhout newspapers, or newspapers without government, I would 
not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter." Paradoxical as 
this may seem, it cannot be doubted that no government can 
be maintained in the spirit of liberty and purity, without the 
chastening influences of the newspaper press. 

It is sometimes said that a rich source of instruction is closed to 
us, because America has no monuments ; and if by this it is 
meant that she is not yet marked with the decay of age and the 
ravages of time, the assertion is stricdy true. But unless ruin is 
more desirable than greatness, and the dim figures of antiquity 
more precious than the fresh and glowing forms of youth, this 
feature of her character is rather her glory than her reproach. 
The monuments of America are not found in the scattered frag- 
ments of the dusty past, but point all of them to the rising gran- 
deurs of the far-off future ; and while older nations '^ look back 
through the twilight of ages that lose themselves in night," the" 
genius of our Republic goes forth in the dawn of morning, to meet 
and welcome the approach of day. No feudal castles, crumbling 
upon our hills, attest the ancient violence of robber-lords, and not 
for us, do the glorious relics of a noble ancestry bear witness, in 
buried columns and broken arches, to the degenerate spirits of their 
unworthy sons ; but in place of these, and far better than these, 
we crown our landscapes with contented homes, we build altars 
to science by the hearthstone of every citizen, and with the spires 
of thousands of churches we point our children the path to Heaven . 
While we can preserve, unimpaired to our country, /ree instruc- 
tion, free religion, and a free press ^ we need ask no other support 
for our institutions, and no other witnesses to our fame. 

To the means of instruction which have been already mentioned, 
I should do wrong not to add that other and peculiar education 
which springs from the very working of our repubhcan system, and 
from which no member of the community can well escape, even 



15 

if he would. Under our policy, every citizen is a part of the Gov- 
ernment, and some of its most important duties are periodically 
devolved upon him, both by law and by necessity. He wields the 
power of the elective franchise, and determines by his vote the choice 
alike of measures and of men; not only loho shall rule him, but 
what shall rule him; he sits in the jury box, and the fortune, the 
fame, nay, the very life of his neighbor, rest upon his decision; he 
is called as a witness, and is sworn to give true testimony on ques- 
tions involving the deepest interests and the most important results; 
or, by the suffrages of his fellow citizens, he is clothed with still 
greater trusts, and assumes responsibilities which belong only to 
the highest stations in the gift of the people. A sovereign in his 
own right, the symbols of his authority are thus constantly before 
his eyeS; and from every new exercise of his power, the American 
citizen derives fresh excitement to his intellect, and increased dig- 
nity to his character. In all his public acts the double motive 
presses upon him to ensure reward and to avoid disgrace. Under 
a free government, he knows full well that, with intelligence and 
fidelity, there are no plaudits which he may not win, and no prizes 
of ambition which are above his reach; while, on the other hand, 
no where else is corruption so inexcusable, and ignorance so wholly 
out of place. In other countries, where passive obedience is the 
fruit of despotism , a stolid people is the natural accompaniment of 
an educated prince; but the genius of our institutions contemplates 
no such thing as an ignorant man, and deems itself defrauded of 
its just claims when it finds a citizen faithless to his duty. The 
large requirements, therefore, of American politics, which are with 
superficial observers the subject of hasty regret, constitute in reality 
one of the most valuable features of our republican system, a most 
affluent source of ennobling instruction, and tend, with inevitable 
certainty, not only to increase the popular intelligence, but to give 
energy, expansion, and elevation to the popular mind. Tran- 



16 

quility and the repose of exclusive devotion to personal pursuits 
are not the most favorable elements either for great conceptions or 
distinguished action . The highest heroism, on the contrary, springs 
from the strongest excitements; and the period of revolution is also 
the period of awakened genius. The same causes which break 
up ancient abuses in society, break up, with equal efficacy, old ab- 
surdities in science and in art; and from the still-heaving waves of 
tumult and reform, emerge side by side the warrior, the statesman, 
the orator, and the poet. The sublime productions of Milton had 
their birth in the same times which produced the stormy charac- 
ter of Oliver Cromwell; and the harsh, passionate voice of the 
one comes softened to our ears by the lofty melody of the other. 
Amid the fierce passions and new found energies of revolution- 
ary France, Mirabeau and Robespierre announced together the 
rising fortunes of the '^ man of destiny." And after convulsions, 
such as the earth has rarely seen. Napoleon comes upon the stage 
prepared for him, and writes his name in iron characters, not only 
upon the history of Europe, but upon the very forehead of the 
world. The experience of modern tunes is confirmed upon this 
subject by all the lessons of antiquity. The home of freedom 
was every where the dweUing place of letters, and we read the ex- 
amples of successful genius, not among the subjects of despotic 
Babylon, but among the democracy of Athens. There was no 
literary fame, even in Greece, until the era opened of her repub- 
lican principles; but thensh^ became the matchless land of civili- 
sation and refinement. 

♦* Where science struck the thrones of earth and heaven, 
Which shook but fell not ; and the harmonious mind 
Poured itself forth in all prophetic song, 
And music hfted up the listening spirit, 
Until it walked, exempt from mortal care, 
Godlike, o'er the clear billows of sweet sound, 



IT 

And human hands first nnimicked, and then mocked 
With moulded limbs, more lovely than its own, 
The human fornf, till marble grew divine.'* 

And the literature of Greece must prove forever the kindling in- 
fluences of Grecian liberty. 

But as no people can continue indefinitely in a state of revolu- 
tion , these excitations of the popular mind in other ages and other 
countries, always producing the same noble fruits, have, after a 
brief and brilliant reign, been as invariably followed by the paral- 
izing torpor of despotism. It was reserved |for our happy coun- 
try to devise a system, our own incomparable federative system, 
which, with the liberalizing influences of the Christian religion in 
freedom and in purity, is constantly instructing and stimulating 
the popular mind, and developing all the energies of our nature. 
It is a problem successfully w^orked out, which justly commands 
the admiration of the world, equally auspicious to literature and to 
liberty, and promises blessings to mankind, which the human im- 
agination can hardly conceive. ^'At this moment, the disastrous 
and ominous condition of Europe, which men of philosophical en- 
quiry and reflection begin to ascribe to inveterate, radical, and per- 
manent evils of political and social systems, but renders more vivid 
and dazzling the bright aspects of our manifold prosperity." But 
this is not the occasion to pursue this train of thought. 

Devoted in patriotism , and ever ready to act on the noble prin- 
ciple — salus ReipubliccB suprema lex — our countrymen have yet, 
neglected nothing which was calculated to adorn domestic life and 
promote individual happiness. Female education has, therefore, 
always been a subject of primary attention. 

Elevated to her appropriate position in society; adorned, refined, 

and accomplished by careful instruction, the American woman is 

the happy companion of the American freeman; gladdening his 

heart by her smile of confidence and love, and cheering him in 

3 



18 

his great career of public duly; by her voice of counsel and appro- 
bation . 

Glorious as our institutions are, their fruit would have turned to 
ashes, without the lovely association of the softer sex, fitted by 
education to be the friend, the joy, the pride of American patriots. 
If our country, from the very nature of its Government, demands 
much of its citizens, let us remember that it makes them capable 
of doing much; and that, by giving to them the stimulus and 
nurture of free institutions, it places within the reach, even of the 
most humble, the highest attainments of learning and the noblest 
achievements of mind. 

The value of this nurture and of this stimulus is best attested by 
the great results which they have already accomplished; and thus 
measured by the standard of results, our whole Republic is but a 
monument to their praise. Under their influence, constantly cher- 
ished and constantly in turn exerted, it has not only maintained 
successfully its freedom and its power, but it has pursued a career 
of progress and improvement, which is without a parallel in the 
history of the world . Fifty-eight years ago it elected its first Pres- 
ident. It then embraced a population of little more than three 
millions, occupying thirteen States, on the Atlantic coast, and cov- 
ering an area of less than five hundred thousand square miles. 
Its population has now swelled to more than twenty millions, and 
it has added nearly a million of square miles to its represented ter- 
ritory. It has more than doubled the number of States, and new 
sovereignties still form themselves in the wilderness to claim its 
confederate honors. With this astonishing increase of its numbers 
and of its peopled and cultivated territory, has grown up, also in a 
ratio equally rapid, every important interest which can possibly add 
either to national wealth or national glory. In agriculture, it has 
invented new implements of industry, and applied them to fresh 
fields of toil; and from the rich abundance of its gathered harvests, 



19 

it not only fills each avenue of want at home, but freights its store- 
ships with a people's tribute to the famine-stricken children of king- 
doms abroad. In commerce, it whitens the very ocean v/ith its 
enterprise, and exchanges products with every climate under the 
sun; while in the rapid advancement of its manufactures, it bids 
fair, at no distant day, to rival even the skill of English industry, 
and to transfer to this side of the Atlantic the ^-workshop of the 
world." 

Pursuing with boundless, because unfettered, zeal each opening 
o( foreign traffic, it at the same time unites its own territory by con- 
stantly extending and improving its means of internal intercourse 
and trade. The remotest inhabitant of the Confederacy is not beyond 
the reach of its post office, and its civilization travels not only with 
the marvellous power of wind and steam, but with the speed of elec- 
tricity, subdued by the art of man, along the lines of its Magnetic 
Telegraph . 

Scarcely more than twenty years ago, it was without a single mile 
of railroad; in 1836, its iron engines traversed a completed track of 
sixteen hundred miles, and it has now more miles of railroad than, 
in the time of Washington, it had of post routes. In proportion 
to its population, it has more than three times as many canals as 
England, and more than four times as many as France; and the 
canal connecting the Hudson with the Lakes, is the longest of these 
artificial rivers which has been constructed in the world . 

In the year 1807, Robert Fulton attracted ridicule by building 
its first steaiT^boat, and ten years after, it had no regular line of 
steamboats in all its western waters. They now crowd in hun- 
dreds upon its ocean rivers and its inland seas, gathering the rich 
products of the most remote and land-locked regions of our country, 
and pouring them into the lap of commerce; they defy every form 
of danger upon its Atlantic coast; they keep company with its na- 
vy against the northers of the Gulf of Mexico ; and, under the foster- 



20 

ing care of Congress^they will soon cross the Ocean with its mails, 
and minister to the wants of our ships of war, and protect our 
merchant marine in every quarter of the globe. A single one of 
its Western- States possesses more steamboats than the whole king- 
dom of France, and there are said to be as many steamers on Lake 
Erie as in the Mediterranean sea. 

Its increasing means of communication thus keep pace with its 
extending settlements, and its whole Union is bound together in 
the strong embraces of mutual intercourse, mutual knowledge, and 
mutual interest. In this way it administers with facility one Gov- 
ernment for twenty-eight sovereignties, and from a single central 
heart diffuses the healthy life-blood of law and justice through all 
portions of the body politic. Yet, with us, Paris is not France, 
and that heart would soon become corrupt, and the stream of sani- 
tary circulation torpid, but for the purifying application of the 
Federative principle, and the chastening and correcting influences 
of the subdivisions of power amongst the States and the people, to 
whom so large a share in the duty of self-government is wisely 
confided . 

The same influences, too, which have thus developed, with 
almost startling rapidity, the various sources of its physical pow- 
er, have adorned it at the same time with cheering monuments of 
its active benevolence, its scientific ingenuity, and its improving 
taste. Its charities partake, at once, of the vigor of its enterprise 
and the abundance of its means, and no worthy object ever yet 
appealed to it in vain. Shrewd and unyielding as it doubtless is 
in the concerns of trade, it is characterized by the warmest sym- 
pathy for human suff'ering, and the most generous disposition to 
give it adequate relief. Its capacious heart, sharing something of 
its broad nationality, has gathered around it none of the iron of 
avarice or the numbness of exhausted feeling, but never fails to re- 
spond with warm(h and feeling to the voice of misfortune, no 



21 

matter from what clime it comes, or what disaster may have pro- 
duced it. In our own country it attests the magnitude of its bene- 
ficence by its charitable institutions, which attract respect, not only 
on account of the purposes to which they are devoted , but from 
their elegant construction and convenient arrangements. Its care 
of its poor has been censured by foreign writers as so extravagant 
as to invite pauperism; and with equal bounty it embraces in its 
ministrations the aged and the sick, the deaf and the dumb, the 
blind and the lunatic. These institutions, so numerous and so 
well adapted to their ends, excite our admiration, not so much 
at their number, as that in so new a country time has been found 
to establish them. Firm in the maintenance of law, its system of 
punishments is characterized by christian benevolence, and the 
pecuniary fines imposed on numerous classes of crimes are devoted 
to the promotion of education — beautifully taxing vice to support 
virtue. 

If America has not yet equalled older nations by her advances 
in literature and art, she has at least laid a firm foundation for them; 
and bright examples of generous attainment and lofty intellect are 
not even now w^anting among her cultivated citizens. Her states- 
manship has been proved in the strictest school of diplomacy; and 
her public speaking, in true eloquence, will not suffer from com- 
parison with that of any other country. In history, in painting, 
and in sculpture, in poetry, in the eloquence of the pulpit, in the 
severe reasoning of the bench, and in the imposing diction of Sen- 
atorial elocution, our country has produced successful competitors 
for a companionship with the most gifted sons of genius in other 
regions of the world. 

But, whatever may be thought of its literature and its taste, its 
contributions to science and to mechanics can never be regarded as 
deficient, either in number or in value. Its discoveries in electri- 
city, in galvanism, and in the application of steam, are as brilliant 



22 

in theory as they are useful in results, and thousands of models in 
our Patent office bear witness that the genius which invented the 
cotton gin, and new moulded the commerce of the world, is still rife 
among the countrymen of Eli Whitney. In mathematics, in min- 
eralogy, in geology, and in chemistry, the profound researches of 
our countrymen have added to the national character, and increased 
the means of social happiness. 

Trammelled by no fetters of ignorance or superstition, the Amer- 
ican child of genius ^^ comes forth with freedom into the glowing 
sunlight of philosophy, as the servant and interpreter of nature; he 
looks abroad into the rich and magnificent universe, calls the de- 
lightful scenery all his own — the mountains, the valleys, the ocean, 
the rivers, and the sky; through these wide bounds he is free at will 
to choose — 

Whate'er bright spoils the florid earth contains, 
Whate'er the water or the ambient air. 

All present him with perfect instances of the consummate wisdom of 
the Almighty God, who created a world so fraught with beauty; 
and by their examination he gains materials, which not only en- 
lighten and adorn, but exalt and purify his mind, teaching him to 
appreciate the miraculous workings of an omnipotent and eternal 
Power." 

But confederate America, after all, is not yet a century old; and 
it is unjust, therefore, to measure her attainments by the ripened 
knowledge which with other nations has been the accumulation of 
centuries. The first condition of progress in every department of 
learning is to appreciate its value, and this condition, at least, she 
has generously fulfilled. There is no object of mental improve- 
ment at all worthy of human pursuit, upon which, in some form 
or other, she has not set the seal of her approval; and her elevation, 
it should be remembered, is not shown by the bright achievements 
of an isolated class, but by the liberal culture of a whole people. 



23 

Without any deductions for her deficiencies, she has done enougn 
aheady to fix the gratitude of her citizens, and to challenge the 
admiration of the world. And yet, she is but in the morning of 
her existence; and brilliant as now is her star, it has only entered 
upon the radiant career which it is destined under Providence yet 
to accomphsh. Her population, her wealth, her intellect, and her 
power, are all of them in the germ only of their first development, 
and are pressing forward to an expansion, whose majestic grandeur 
it is difficult for the mind to realize. When we consider her 
sparseness of population, her vacant territory, her favored position, 
her unrivalled Government, and remember the momentum which 
she has received from the past, and the increased energy which 
she must acquire from every succeeding step of her onward march, 
we are ready to believe nothing impossible in her future greatness. 

It would be vain to expect that the work of mere human hands, 
requiring the agency of human means, should attain successful 
results, without sometimes exhibiting the imperfections of its au- 
thors, and the infirmities of their nature. 

In the progress of our experiment of self-government, we have 
encountered dangers which appeared to threaten failure, and which 
were exultingly hailed by the enemies of freedom as the sure 
sign that our Federal Union, the prolific source of all our bless- 
ings, would prove but a '• rope of sand." Through these dan- 
gers we have successfully passed. Others must await us. 

We know 

* ' There is a divinity which shapes our ends, 
Rough hew them as we may," 

and we will not despair of the Republic; always remembering 
that, if in the collisions of interest, the wickedness of fanaticism, 
or the frenzy of party, we recur to those feelings of fraternal af- 
fection , forbearance , and conciliation , and to those great principles 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 



24 028 356 548 8 

of justice and respect for the rights of all, which animated our fa- 
thers, we will not fail to secure the perpetuity of our institutions. 

The magnitude of our country's destiny must depend j howev- 
er, under Providence, upon the virtue and intelligence of her in- 
dividual citizens; and to all of us, therefore, she addresses the so- 
lemn appeal of patriotism and humanity. While, therefore, we 
endeavor to appreciate as it deserves our glorious heritage of liber- 
ty and happiness, let us also appreciate the vast responsibility by 
which it is accompanied ! Living under the only free government 
on earth, upon us are concentrated the dearest political hopes of man . 
Wherever glitters the crown of despotism, or faintly throbs the 
heart of freedom — wherever toil goes unrewarded, or human right 
is crushed beneath oppression — from patriots of all climes, and the 
oppressed of every land — come blended to our ears, voices alike 
of warning and entreaty ; all invoking us to be faithful to our holy 
trust, and to preserve it sacredly for the civil redemption of the 
world. The voices of the past come mingled with the voices of 
the present, and amid the graves of fallen empires, and the splen- 
did ruins of departed greatness, we gather anew the solemn lesson 
of individual duty. Let us receive it with submission, and rev- 
erence, and awe; and let it increase the warmth of our patriotism, 
the earnestness of our virtue, and the devotedness of our toil. If 
we would discharge aright the duty which we owe to our country 
and to mankind, let us begin by discharging aright the duty which 
we owe ourselves. 

*' This above all, to thine own self be true ; 
And it must follow, as the night the day, 
Thou canst not then be false to any man." 



f 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 



028 356 548 8^ 



